Death of an Old Sinner (The Mrs. Norris Mysteries Book 1)

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Nick roared from the bedroom door: “The goddamn bird flew out the window! He’ll be blabbin’ up and down the neighborhood, “Ransom, Ransom, Ransom.”

  “He’ll get pneumonia out in this weather!” Flora screamed and ran to the window.

  “I’m losing patience, baby,” Nick said.

  “Nickie—I don’t know a thing about you, exceptin’ that note Ransom got from you by mistake…”

  “Keep talkin’.”

  “If I was to give that to you now, would you go along to Florida, and jus’ forget ever meetin’ up with me again?”

  “I’d love to forget it, baby.”

  “Swear it?”

  “My word as a gentleman,” Casey said.

  The sound of Flora’s heels clacked across the floor.

  “Thanks,” Casey said after a moment, and Mrs. Norris could hear the tearing of paper.

  There was a long ring and a short at the door. “That’s Echo,” Casey said. “I’m gonna wait in the car, baby. He’ll help you pack. Come here now! You ain’t going out any window when my back is turned.” Casey must have been hauling her by the arm for her feet stumbled after his to the door.

  “But you promised,” Flora cried, “you gave me your word!”

  “As a gentleman,” said Nick. “You know better than that.”

  “Mrs. Norris?” Helene squeaked.

  Mrs. Norris lifted the spread to peer out at her.

  “What will we do?” Mrs. Joyce queried in a whisper.

  “I wish we could fly out like the bird,” she said.

  Casey and Flora returned, and with them a man the toes of whose very shoes rose from the floor like black moons, Mrs. Norris thought.

  “Now listen to me, baby, and listen good. We got a nice large trunk on the back of the car. You can go in that—or you can go inside the car sitting beside me like a doll.”

  Flora’s response was to sink into a dead faint, her face six inches away from Mrs. Norris’.

  “Bring her any way you can,” Casey snarled. “And don’t wait to clean up.”

  “Echo,” merely grunted.

  Mrs. Norris tensed her fists. She waited, holding her breath until she heard the door close behind Casey. The thing called “Echo” came between the two beds to begin his work on Flora. As though by signal, Mrs. Norris and Helene each grabbed him by a leg, except that Mrs. Norris couldn’t hold hers when he began to tumble. She humped out from beneath the bed like a snail, however, and while the thug was twisting and scratching at Helene’s grip on his ankle, Mrs. Norris climbed onto the bed and bounded from there upon his back. Helene scrambled out and to her feet.

  “Throw water on her, we may need her,” Mrs. Norris directed Helene, riding the goon piggy-back while he balked round the room like a mule.

  Helene grabbed the only water nearby, a vase with the last of the late General’s roses, and dumped it flowers and all on Miss Flora Tims. She rose up in a wrath and Mrs. Norris let go of her hold on “Echo.” He went out of the place like a rabbit only a leap and a pant ahead of the vixens.

  47

  THE DETECTIVE AND JIMMIE had driven up at the moment “Echo” got out of the limousine to go upstairs. They waited long enough to ascertain that two people were in the car, a man and a woman, and both of them looking like mummies. Then, even as Tully and Jimmie were walking by, the man took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands. He pulled himself up in the seat then, using a chrome rail at the side, and from that he wiped the perspiration also. He turned and stared at the building into which the thug had gone.

  Tully watched with fascination. Thus was accounted the lack of fingerprints on the door of the General’s Jaguar! A mere nervous habit of Mr. Robinson’s.

  He and Jimmie went into Flora’s building, striding quickly, and ringing every bell for entrance into the downstairs hall. They were admitted in time to catch the elevator. The door was closing on the wire cage when Tully recognized Nick Casey. Wherever the gangster had found the stairs he was on his way out of the building. Tully moved with the unexpected speed of a snake, and slithered his lean body out before he was caged in the lift.

  Casey caught sight of him then, sprinted across the street and leaped into the driver’s seat of the limousine. The car had been parked with the caution of thieves, and it took Casey but an instant to power it on its way. Tully had his revolver in hand. He might have shot out the tires, and again he might have missed. There were bystanders and walkers on the street. Let him go. The alarm was out. He would not go far, even if the license number Tully wrote down was another phony.

  The detective moved in the direction from which Casey had come and found the stairs. From some flights up, as he started mounting, someone was starting down pell mell. Then came a shrieking and howling and clamor of heels, all to put him in mind of goats and geese, bats and banshees. He drew his revolver and waited. The moonfaced one came down, his mouth and his eyes like round holes.

  Moon-face flung himself against the wall and crumbled there into a heap as the three women hove down upon him. Mrs. Norris was brandishing an ashstand like a shillelah, Mrs. Joyce had a lamp by the neck, and the other one, looking like she’d been washed up in the seaweed, and in her petticoat at that, was waving a fireplace broom.

  “All right, ladies. You can turn in your badges,” Tully said at the top of his voice. He frisked the blubbering lump at his feet and took from him a snub-nosed revolver and a knife that would have butchered a hog.

  Jimmie came down the steps. “Anything I can do?”

  “Round up the women,” said Tully. “They shouldn’t get too fond of this sort of business.”

  He jerked the goon onto his feet and out to the car. He wanted him to see that Casey had abandoned him. The poor slob stood limp and miserable in bewilderment that the limousine was gone from where he had parked it. The poor slob, Tully thought again, poor bedamned. He was equipped like an arsenal. All Casey ever needed to do was say “sick ʼem,” and get himself an alibi.

  Later, when all the pieces were being fitted together in the D.A.’s office, Tully finished the portrait of “Echo”: “A mechanical man, with a kind of a heart, but no brains at all. When it comes to an automobile, there probably isn’t a better driver on the road. Nothing else on his mind, don’t you see. Absolute concentration. And when he was told to give the note to Johnny Rocco, Casey must have told him no more than was absolutely necessary—a man in his seventies, who drove a sports car, and who could be found at Robbie-the-Printer’s.”

  Mrs. Norris gave a start. “Robbie-the-Printer,” she said. “Oh, my goodness.”

  “He’s quite a fellow, your brother-in-law,” Mr. Tully said with a wink at Jimmie. “He thinks you might be willing to go bail for him. Says the General told him you had buckets of money.”

  “Buckets—oh!” Mrs. Norris cried, “well, if he’s the good provider Mag still claims he is, he can go bail for himself.”

  Nick Casey and his passengers had been picked up at the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel. Mr. Robinson admitted to bookmaking in partnership with Johnny Rocco, but to no other crime. All he had accepted from Mr. Casey was his offer of a ride to Florida after Rocco was killed. As soon as he could then Mr. Robinson had liquidated his assets. And how he had come to know Nick Casey? It took Robbie-the-Printer but a moment to get round that: “He was a friend of a friend…of a friend, who was trying to tempt me into another little business on the side…the manufacture of famous diaries, you might say.”

  Mr. Tully had not pursued the question further.

  “Whatever’s to become of Mag now?” said Mrs. Norris.

  “Well, I’ll tell you how I see it,” Tully said. “Mr. Robinson was inquiring if there was any chance of him being deported. Back to the country of his origin that would be. He would work there at the same trade, legitimate, he says, and he’s promised Mag all her life to take her home.”

  “The canny rogue! A fit companion for the General, excuse me, Master Jamie.”

 
; “I was thinking much the same thing,” said Jimmie. “You know, Jasp, I have a few friends in the State Department…”

  “If you want my advice then, my boy,” said Tully, “put in a good word quick for a bad egg. I’ll press his suit here, if you know what I mean.”

  The D.A. himself squeezed the confession out of “Echo” and his boss. While Nick was trying to explain to Miss Tims the mistake his boy made that Thursday night, “Echo” returned to Brooklyn to straighten things out there. He arrived back at Robbie-the-Printer’s in time to get Johnny Rocco’s “No” to Nick’s proposition. He trailed him then to the First Federal Bank. He let him get out of the car, make his deposit in the night box, and then took him on the long ride home. By that time Nick was getting out of night court in Manhattan.

  Since the District Attorney of two boroughs shared the headlines with “the crusading gubernatorial candidate” on the cracking of the Rocco case and the breakup of the gambling ring in Brooklyn, cooperation flowed like politicos’ saliva. At the request of all the ladies involved, their names and the extent of their participation in the roundup were withheld.

  By nightfall, the trio of Tully, Norris and Jarvis, started on a last call in the line of duty. Mrs. Joyce said she had had it. She would make dinner for them and kiss them all adieu thereafter. Judge Turner had offered her a fellowship in the peaceful English countryside. Little had she known then how much and how soon she would need it.

  48

  “RANSOM, RANSOM, RANSOM….” THE parakeet was back in his cage.

  “Everybody in the neighborhood thought he was callin’ them handsome…handsome, handsome, handsome. Isn’t that cute?”

  “Cunning,” Jimmie said.

  “Miss Tims, we’re awful tired, all three of us,” Tully said.

  “I guess I am, too,” she said, “and after you all go I’m goin’ to be left all alone again. That’s why I took up with Nick….”

  “The night General Jarvis died,” Tully pushed gently. “Will you tell us what happened after you went to the pawn shop for his medals?”

  Miss Tims drew a deep breath and plunged into the story. “Before that, he was so lovin’. I won’t ever forget it…and he didn’t feel very good. We’d had a quarrel you see the night before over Nick. But you know that. And it was so wonderful makin’ up and all. And he gave me a hundred dollar bill to get his medals. ‘I’ve got to wear ʼem in the morning, Flora. St. Patrick’s Day in the morning.’ ” Flora sniffed back the tears. “When I got home with them he was dead.”

  “Dead at your house?” Jimmie said.

  Flora nodded. “That’s how I felt about it too, Mr. Jarvis. I didn’t want him disgraced—you know.” She shrugged. “I’m nothin’ much without him…and I knew it would be in the papers. I got a friend down the hall. He works nights sometimes. I gave him fifty dollars and he helped me. We were goin’ to pretend that everything was just wonderful. All three of us havin’ a wonderful time. And we did it, too. I had to get Nick’s chauffer to drive us, but it worked out fine…almost.”

  “Your friend down the hall,” Jimmie said, “he’s an entertainer?”

  Flora nodded.

  “A ventriloquist?” Tully prompted.

  “How did you know?”

  Tully looked at Jimmie. “Dead men don’t curse as elegant as it was said your father did that night. And nobody could look him in the face. Rubber legs, the cabbie said. It all fits—now. You didn’t waste much time moving him.”

  “I was afraid of rigor mortis,” Flora said.

  Tully rubbed the back of his neck. “That must’ve been the only thing in New York you were afraid of, miss.”

  “Love finds a way,” Flora said calmly.

  Mrs. Norris leaned forward. “And did you put his medals on him, dearie?”

  “Don’t call me ‘dearie.’ I know what you think I am.”

  “I saved your life this afternoon, Miss Tims.”

  “That don’t give you the right to call me names. Yes, I put his medals on him. I knew he died proud and I wanted everybody else to know it, too.”

  “A true Southern lady,” Jimmie said, and Miss Tims’ face just lighted up with a smile.

  By its glow the three of them took their departure. At the door Flora said: “Mr. Jarvis, did you get your dispatch case?” Jimmie nodded. “I found it here later, and Nick said Lem Python would see you got it.”

  “He did,” Jimmie said. “Oh yes, indeed he did.”

  49

  IT WAS A GREAT relief, Jimmie thought, to settle down to the monotony of politics. Helene was really and truly packing. Not in a huff. She had been tempted from the first offer despite its indignity. But many an artist has chiseled beauty out of an indignity, she said. Pygmalion again. Jimmie was wistful. It gave him a charming air of melancholy. Very good for a candidate running on a bachelor’s ticket.

  On Saturday night Mr. Tully was to come to dinner, all the way to Nyack.

  “Isn’t it a wee bit of a strain?” Mrs. Norris asked him.

  “It’d be more of a strain if I didn’t,” he said, and ventured for the first time to give her a hug.

  He was invited again and again and again.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mrs. Norris Mysteries

  1

  MRS. NORRIS FASTENED THE last bit of sheeting around the legs of the last chair in the room to be covered, and then rechecked the whole of the hooded furniture for snugness. It was not that she expected wind—or for that matter, a windless occupancy—in the shuttered house. But neither would she have ruled out the possibility of the latter, especially in this room where the late General Jarvis had in his day stirred up so much fury.

  The housekeeper gave a great sigh which, finally admitting the truth to herself at least, she acknowledged to have been sent after her late employer. There was many a man walking this earth of whom it could be said he was more dead than alive, but not many in their graves of whom you could say they were more alive than dead: the spirit was strong, however weak had been the flesh. She double-checked the locks on the windows and then went quickly from the room, clutching her skirts in her hand as though to be sure all of her got out at once and closed the door.

  On the whole she was glad young Mr. Jarvis had decided to close the Nyack house for the winter. A Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park was not to be complained of by its housekeeper. True, she would miss the Hudson River which she often thought better company than some of the people she knew. But it was always cranky in November, the river, and rude as winter itself to all her acquaintance who didn’t live near it. Mr. Tully, for example—her friend the detective, as she called him, not being able quite at her age to call him her beau, and having a deep aversion to the phrase “gentleman friend,” as though she would have a male caller who was not a gentleman—Mr. Tully when he came at all this weather, would take up a stance before the fire the minute he gave up his topcoat, and turn himself round and round like a hare on a spit until it was time to go home.

  Which but showed, she decided on further thought while she rolled up the hall rug, how little adaptability there was in the man. City born and city bred, he would not be transplanted at his age. She wondered then if her Master Jamie had taken into consideration Mr. Tully’s attentions to her, in making his own change of winter residence.

  Now here was a man—her Mister James—perceptive and considerate, and himself marvelously adaptable. He could oblige fortune and fame, or he could brook failure with the dignity of a royal pretender. He was in fact all things to at least one woman. Mrs. Norris had raised him the forty-odd years of his life.

  Downstairs, she paused at the library door and asked if there was any way in which she could help him. He was packing his own books.

  “Do you have the measurement of the shelves in town?”

  She liked the way the words “in town” slipped from his tongue. It took out whatever sting there was for her in the change. She measured the largest of the books by the breadth of h
er own hand.

  “They’ll fit well enough, sir, but are you taking them all?”

  “Those I need,” he said.

  She started from the room, but could not resist a further plea though she knew the cause lost as far as coming between him and his books was concerned. “Don’t you have the law books at the office, Mr. James?”

  “Yes,” he said, continuing to pack law books.

  She waited a moment at the door. “I left your father’s den to the last and it’s done now. I have only to gather up my own few bits and pieces.”

  “My God,” said Jimmie, “if you feel that bad, we’d better stop for a drink.”

  “I don’t feel that bad at all,” Mrs. Norris said.

  “Then you don’t want a drink?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’ll not be made out a hypocrite, Mr. James.”

  Jimmie rubbed his chin with a dirty thumb. Certainly not if it meant doing her out of a drink at the same time. “Will you bring in the makings, then, Mrs. Norris?”

  “I will since you ask it.”

  When she returned with the tray, Jimmie said: “I don’t suppose Jasper will take it at all hard, your moving into the city?” There was a bit of the tease in him his father had been.

  “It’s very difficult to tell,” Mrs. Norris said. “Mr. Tully’s a cool man for an Irishman.”

  “I’d never have known it hearing him speak your praises,” Jimmie said slyly.

  Mrs. Norris gave her shoulders a vigorous shrugging. “I was speaking of his blood, not his blather.”

  “Blather,” Jimmie repeated, wiping his hands on the duster she gave him. “Isn’t that an Irish word?”

  “It is a Gaelic word, Master James, and there were Gaels in Scotland while Ireland was a circle of druids.”